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Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse
Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""
In a world where executives of companies that lose money expect as a matter of course to be paid millions of dollars of bonuses, it is a given that a tool such as the DMCA **WILL** be abused to silence opposition or competition...
57% are from businesses targeting competitors, and only 37% are invalid? What does that mean? 1.) That up to 20% of notices are from businesses who are catching their competitors in the act? 2.) Or is it not 37% of total notices? 3.) Or am I getting mixed up on something?
There was a time when music was sold as sheet music. Somehow Joplin was making a $100,000 a week in the 1920's, even though it's fairly trivial to simply hand-copy someone-else's work.
I know I'm preaching to the choir on this one, but copyright law is increasingly working more against society than in its interests, and this story just goes to prove that yet again. When laws hurt more than they help, they need to be changed or abolished.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
"The New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, stated that the stronger copyright laws, including the controversial section 92a, were required for New Zealand to be able to negotiate a free trade agreement with America."
DMCA notices are filed under penalty of perjury. Has anybody, ever, even a single case, been punished for filing a false takedown?
*crickets*
Do you know what makes money the root of all evil? It[']s love.
Could mean "Love, in general, is the answer to the question" or "Love of money is what makes it bad."
See? Its absolutely possible to make a sentence where, when the apostrophe is misused, it's presence or absence matters.
U r right, it really dusnt matter how u spell. Its not like their are standards to maintain. Or that its just plane irritating to sea.
(Pedants aside, a large proportion of Slashdot readers are programmers whose brains sound an alarm bell when a sentence doesn't parse correctly.)
Hoist by thine own petard. By the way it's "ought to". See, we can all be pedantic grammar nazis too.
It's easy. And yet... so pointless. Language is a means of communication. For millennia, it had no agreed, defined structure. Then along comes Dr Johnson, the world's first grammar nazi, and spoiled things for everyone by stifling creativity. Shakespeare, a man who -- you know -- was and is, widely renowned for being quite good at English, used to make words up all the time, and bend others to his will. You'd have him shot, no doubt. Or his books burned for grammar crimes.
Did you understand what the summary meant? Yes, you did. So... shut up.
Good point. I never thought of things that way- it's just needless formatting. I mean, taking things one step further now, I guess it doesn't really matter if you don't
haveanyspacesat
allinyoursenten
ces.Iguessyoudo'
n'treallyneedth
oseafterall,ori
nfactorevenpunc.
tuationatallorc
apitallettersim
eanalltheconten
tisthereandther.
estisjustformat
tingdesignedtom'
akethesentencee
asiertoreadandr
emoveambiguitie
sbutimeanheyify
oucouldntbeboth-
eredspendingthe
typetypingoutyo.
ursentenceaccur
atelyandmakingi
teasytoreadwhys
houlditaketheti
metoreadit-
Edit: Even the filter won't let me post sentences like this without putting in some junk.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
The content of the Google submission to TCF can be found here. Some of the other submission (including the Auckland District Law Society and the Radio New Zealand submissions) are worth a read.
I get that wrong all the time even though I'm fully aware that the possessive of "it" is "its". It's not that I'm bad at English, I just don't give a fuck about that particular apostrophe.
In fact, if it wasn't for the squiggly red lines I wouldn't care to correct my mistyping. I just can't stand those awful squiggles, it's like they're Satan rising up from ashes to haunt me with the terror of a thousand mad-libs...
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Um, have you been paying attention? We have been moaning about this for the last year, some of us (me, maybe not you) wrote to our electoral candidates asking what they would do about it, and now the National government has suspended the enactment of the law for review. Seems like moaning about it is all we can do, but at least it is having an effect!
mediocrity rules, man
This is exactly how people used to write. The use of a punctuation marker between words didn't catch on in Latin until sometime between 600AD and 800AD. A lot of punctuation marks, and grammar in general, is a relatively recent fad.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s. Any sentence. Don't have one? Still feel like you know something important?
I feel it's nuts.
That's a good question. I think the penalty of perjury clause serves as a mild deterrent, and I think to an extent it does work. It takes a pretty dishonest person to sign on the dotted line, under the penalty of perjury, things to which the person is attesting falsely. Of course, that doesn't stop unscrupulous individuals who use the same logic - that the penalty is really not enforced.
/. members do. I think legitimate copyrights, trademarks and patents deserve reasonable protection in an information-based economy. Yes, the Act went far too far with the anti-circumvention clauses that obviously thwart innovation. However, in the electronic world where bad actors can instantly steal and widely disseminate other people's work and pass it off as their own - and even masquerade as the owner of the work maliciously, it is very helpful to have a method within the law for protecting ownership rights short of always involving lawyers at substantial and on-going costs. Every once in a while my organization has to send out a DMCA take down notice against those who are using our trademarks to sell counterfeit merchandise. If the DMCA were not in force and we had to file a lawsuit over every small act of infringement, we would not be able to afford to protect our rights. On the other hand, we once also faced a scum bag lawyer who fraudulently abused the DMCA (under the penalty of perjury) and caused us huge problems because of the incompetence of Network Solutions. We had to remedy that situation in court.
I don't hate the DMCA like the vast majority of
The DMCA is a legal tool that can either be used properly or misused. The most important thing for web hosts and other service providers to do is to abide by the protocol established by the Act for handling take-downs and counter-notices and to publish a DMCA policy that recognizes that protocol. Unfortunately, in hotly contested situations many web hosts will be more responsive to the threats of abusive lawyers than to the letter of the federal law and their own stated policies. A lot of providers don't publish any information on how they handle DMCA notices, and that is a problem. YMMV.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Do you think this would be enough to force the DCMA to be kneecapped? Clearly this was not it's intended purpose so the law needs to change.
Now show me one sentence where the meaning becomes different depending on which way you spell it(')s.
Never drink wine before its time. (Don't drink pre-vintage wine)
Never drink wine before it's time. (Don't drink before 12pm)
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina
If you look carefully, you'll see that artor3 misused both apostrophes in that last sentence.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
And believe you me, it was not easy finding a way of phrasing that that gave me the opportunity to mess them both up. =P
On every search page where they've removed results due to the DMCA, the following is placed (the only editing I have done is to the link that would link to the actual notice - it's different for each notice, but Chilling Effects doesn't always have the notice on file):
In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org.
Linking there does not seem to be supportive of the DMCA. Chilling Effects is surprisingly neutral, given it's project by several law schools and the EFF, but it's far from blind supportiveness from what I can see.
(Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, nor am I American, so I may not know as much about this as someone else here.)
is businesses targeting their own customers - RIAA and MPAA.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Duhhh. People don't speak like a textbook. I often use such words as "oughta", as in "oughta be tarred and feathered". It isn't ignorance, nor is it carelessness - I type it that way intentionally, because people all over America TALK THAT WAY. Ain't you glad that it's so? (Don't bother telling me that "Ain't ain't a word", I've heard it enough times, and it IS A WORD, commonly used by uneducated and educated people alike.)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br